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  <div class="section" id="s-writing-your-first-django-app-part-2">
<span id="writing-your-first-django-app-part-2"></span><h1>Writing your first Django app, part 2<a class="headerlink" href="#writing-your-first-django-app-part-2" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>This tutorial begins where <a class="reference internal" href="tutorial01.html"><em>Tutorial 1</em></a> left off. We&#8217;re
continuing the Web-poll application and will focus on Django&#8217;s
automatically-generated admin site.</p>
<div class="admonition-philosophy admonition">
<p class="first admonition-title">Philosophy</p>
<p>Generating admin sites for your staff or clients to add, change and delete
content is tedious work that doesn&#8217;t require much creativity. For that
reason, Django entirely automates creation of admin interfaces for models.</p>
<p>Django was written in a newsroom environment, with a very clear separation
between &#8220;content publishers&#8221; and the &#8220;public&#8221; site. Site managers use the
system to add news stories, events, sports scores, etc., and that content is
displayed on the public site. Django solves the problem of creating a
unified interface for site administrators to edit content.</p>
<p class="last">The admin isn&#8217;t intended to be used by site visitors. It&#8217;s for site
managers.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-creating-an-admin-user">
<span id="creating-an-admin-user"></span><h2>Creating an admin user<a class="headerlink" href="#creating-an-admin-user" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>First we&#8217;ll need to create a user who can login to the admin site. Run the
following command:</p>
<div class="highlight-console"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="gp">$</span> python manage.py createsuperuser
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Enter your desired username and press enter.</p>
<div class="highlight-text"><div class="highlight"><pre>Username: admin
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>You will then be prompted for your desired email address:</p>
<div class="highlight-text"><div class="highlight"><pre>Email address: admin@example.com
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The final step is to enter your password. You will be asked to enter your
password twice, the second time as a confirmation of the first.</p>
<div class="highlight-text"><div class="highlight"><pre>Password: **********
Password (again): *********
Superuser created successfully.
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-start-the-development-server">
<span id="start-the-development-server"></span><h2>Start the development server<a class="headerlink" href="#start-the-development-server" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>The Django admin site is activated by default. Let&#8217;s start the development
server and explore it.</p>
<p>Recall from Tutorial 1 that you start the development server like so:</p>
<div class="highlight-console"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="gp">$</span> python manage.py runserver
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Now, open a Web browser and go to &#8220;/admin/&#8221; on your local domain &#8211; e.g.,
<a class="reference external" href="http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/">http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/</a>. You should see the admin&#8217;s login screen:</p>
<img alt="Django admin login screen" src="../_images/admin01.png" />
<p>Since <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/i18n/translation.html"><em>translation</em></a> is turned on by default,
the login screen may be displayed in your own language, depending on your
browser&#8217;s settings and on whether Django has a translation for this language.</p>
<div class="admonition-doesn-t-match-what-you-see admonition">
<p class="first admonition-title">Doesn&#8217;t match what you see?</p>
<p>If at this point, instead of the above login page, you get an error
page reporting something like:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre>ImportError at /admin/
cannot import name patterns
...
</pre></div>
</div>
<p class="last">then you&#8217;re probably using a version of Django that doesn&#8217;t match this
tutorial version. You&#8217;ll want to either switch to the older tutorial or the
newer Django version.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-enter-the-admin-site">
<span id="enter-the-admin-site"></span><h2>Enter the admin site<a class="headerlink" href="#enter-the-admin-site" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Now, try logging in with the superuser account you created in the previous step.
You should see the Django admin index page:</p>
<img alt="Django admin index page" src="../_images/admin02.png" />
<p>You should see a few types of editable content: groups and users. They are
provided by <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/auth/index.html#module-django.contrib.auth" title="django.contrib.auth: Django's authentication framework."><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">django.contrib.auth</span></tt></a>, the authentication framework shipped
by Django.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-make-the-poll-app-modifiable-in-the-admin">
<span id="make-the-poll-app-modifiable-in-the-admin"></span><h2>Make the poll app modifiable in the admin<a class="headerlink" href="#make-the-poll-app-modifiable-in-the-admin" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>But where&#8217;s our poll app? It&#8217;s not displayed on the admin index page.</p>
<p>Just one thing to do: we need to tell the admin that <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt>
objects have an admin interface. To do this, open the <tt class="file docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/admin.py</span></tt>
file, and edit it to look like this:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>

<span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Question</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-explore-the-free-admin-functionality">
<span id="explore-the-free-admin-functionality"></span><h2>Explore the free admin functionality<a class="headerlink" href="#explore-the-free-admin-functionality" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Now that we&#8217;ve registered <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt>, Django knows that it should be displayed on
the admin index page:</p>
<img alt="Django admin index page, now with polls displayed" src="../_images/admin03t.png" />
<p>Click &#8220;Questions&#8221;. Now you&#8217;re at the &#8220;change list&#8221; page for questions. This page
displays all the question in the database and lets you choose one to change it.
There&#8217;s the &#8220;What&#8217;s up?&#8221; question we created in the first tutorial:</p>
<img alt="Polls change list page" src="../_images/admin04t.png" />
<p>Click the &#8220;What&#8217;s up?&#8221; question to edit it:</p>
<img alt="Editing form for question object" src="../_images/admin05t.png" />
<p>Things to note here:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>The form is automatically generated from the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt> model.</li>
<li>The different model field types (<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.DateTimeField" title="django.db.models.DateTimeField"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">DateTimeField</span></tt></a>,
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.CharField" title="django.db.models.CharField"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">CharField</span></tt></a>) correspond to the appropriate HTML
input widget. Each type of field knows how to display itself in the Django
admin.</li>
<li>Each <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.DateTimeField" title="django.db.models.DateTimeField"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">DateTimeField</span></tt></a> gets free JavaScript
shortcuts. Dates get a &#8220;Today&#8221; shortcut and calendar popup, and times get
a &#8220;Now&#8221; shortcut and a convenient popup that lists commonly entered times.</li>
</ul>
<p>The bottom part of the page gives you a couple of options:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Save &#8211; Saves changes and returns to the change-list page for this type of
object.</li>
<li>Save and continue editing &#8211; Saves changes and reloads the admin page for
this object.</li>
<li>Save and add another &#8211; Saves changes and loads a new, blank form for this
type of object.</li>
<li>Delete &#8211; Displays a delete confirmation page.</li>
</ul>
<p>If the value of &#8220;Date published&#8221; doesn&#8217;t match the time when you created the
question in Tutorial 1, it probably means you forgot to set the correct value for
the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TIME_ZONE"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TIME_ZONE</span></tt></a> setting. Change it, reload the page and check that
the correct value appears.</p>
<p>Change the &#8220;Date published&#8221; by clicking the &#8220;Today&#8221; and &#8220;Now&#8221; shortcuts. Then
click &#8220;Save and continue editing.&#8221; Then click &#8220;History&#8221; in the upper right.
You&#8217;ll see a page listing all changes made to this object via the Django admin,
with the timestamp and username of the person who made the change:</p>
<img alt="History page for question object" src="../_images/admin06t.png" />
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-customize-the-admin-form">
<span id="customize-the-admin-form"></span><h2>Customize the admin form<a class="headerlink" href="#customize-the-admin-form" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Take a few minutes to marvel at all the code you didn&#8217;t have to write. By
registering the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt> model with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin.site.register(Question)</span></tt>,
Django was able to construct a default form representation. Often, you&#8217;ll want
to customize how the admin form looks and works. You&#8217;ll do this by telling
Django the options you want when you register the object.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s see how this works by re-ordering the fields on the edit form. Replace
the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin.site.register(Question)</span></tt> line with:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>


<span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">fields</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;question_text&#39;</span><span class="p">]</span>

<span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Question</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>You&#8217;ll follow this pattern &#8211; create a model admin object, then pass it as the
second argument to <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin.site.register()</span></tt> &#8211; any time you need to change the
admin options for an object.</p>
<p>This particular change above makes the &#8220;Publication date&#8221; come before the
&#8220;Question&#8221; field:</p>
<img alt="Fields have been reordered" src="../_images/admin07.png" />
<p>This isn&#8217;t impressive with only two fields, but for admin forms with dozens
of fields, choosing an intuitive order is an important usability detail.</p>
<p>And speaking of forms with dozens of fields, you might want to split the form
up into fieldsets:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>


<span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">fieldsets</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span>
        <span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">None</span><span class="p">,</span>               <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;fields&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;question_text&#39;</span><span class="p">]}),</span>
        <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;Date information&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;fields&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">]}),</span>
    <span class="p">]</span>

<span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Question</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The first element of each tuple in
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.fieldsets" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.fieldsets"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">fieldsets</span></tt></a> is the title of the fieldset.
Here&#8217;s what our form looks like now:</p>
<img alt="Form has fieldsets now" src="../_images/admin08t.png" />
<p>You can assign arbitrary HTML classes to each fieldset. Django provides a
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">&quot;collapse&quot;</span></tt> class that displays a particular fieldset initially collapsed.
This is useful when you have a long form that contains a number of fields that
aren&#8217;t commonly used:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>


<span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">fieldsets</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span>
        <span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">None</span><span class="p">,</span>               <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;fields&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;question_text&#39;</span><span class="p">]}),</span>
        <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;Date information&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;fields&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">],</span> <span class="s">&#39;classes&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;collapse&#39;</span><span class="p">]}),</span>
    <span class="p">]</span>

<span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Question</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<img alt="Fieldset is initially collapsed" src="../_images/admin09.png" />
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-adding-related-objects">
<span id="adding-related-objects"></span><h2>Adding related objects<a class="headerlink" href="#adding-related-objects" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>OK, we have our Question admin page. But a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt> has multiple <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choices</span></tt>, and
the admin page doesn&#8217;t display choices.</p>
<p>Yet.</p>
<p>There are two ways to solve this problem. The first is to register <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choice</span></tt>
with the admin just as we did with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt>. That&#8217;s easy:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Choice</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">Question</span>
<span class="c"># ...</span>
<span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Choice</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Now &#8220;Choices&#8221; is an available option in the Django admin. The &#8220;Add choice&#8221; form
looks like this:</p>
<img alt="Choice admin page" src="../_images/admin10.png" />
<p>In that form, the &#8220;Question&#8221; field is a select box containing every question in the
database. Django knows that a <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.ForeignKey" title="django.db.models.ForeignKey"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">ForeignKey</span></tt></a> should be
represented in the admin as a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">&lt;select&gt;</span></tt> box. In our case, only one question
exists at this point.</p>
<p>Also note the &#8220;Add Another&#8221; link next to &#8220;Question.&#8221; Every object with a
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ForeignKey</span></tt> relationship to another gets this for free. When you click &#8220;Add
Another,&#8221; you&#8217;ll get a popup window with the &#8220;Add question&#8221; form. If you add a question
in that window and click &#8220;Save,&#8221; Django will save the question to the database and
dynamically add it as the selected choice on the &#8220;Add choice&#8221; form you&#8217;re
looking at.</p>
<p>But, really, this is an inefficient way of adding <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choice</span></tt> objects to the system.
It&#8217;d be better if you could add a bunch of Choices directly when you create the
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt> object. Let&#8217;s make that happen.</p>
<p>Remove the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">register()</span></tt> call for the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choice</span></tt> model. Then, edit the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt>
registration code to read:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Choice</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">Question</span>


<span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">ChoiceInline</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">StackedInline</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">model</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Choice</span>
    <span class="n">extra</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="mi">3</span>


<span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">fieldsets</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span>
        <span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">None</span><span class="p">,</span>               <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;fields&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;question_text&#39;</span><span class="p">]}),</span>
        <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;Date information&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;fields&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">],</span> <span class="s">&#39;classes&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;collapse&#39;</span><span class="p">]}),</span>
    <span class="p">]</span>
    <span class="n">inlines</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="n">ChoiceInline</span><span class="p">]</span>

<span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">register</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Question</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>This tells Django: &#8220;<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choice</span></tt> objects are edited on the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt> admin page. By
default, provide enough fields for 3 choices.&#8221;</p>
<p>Load the &#8220;Add question&#8221; page to see how that looks:</p>
<img alt="Add question page now has choices on it" src="../_images/admin11t.png" />
<p>It works like this: There are three slots for related Choices &#8211; as specified
by <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">extra</span></tt> &#8211; and each time you come back to the &#8220;Change&#8221; page for an
already-created object, you get another three extra slots.</p>
<p>At the end of the three current slots you will find an &#8220;Add another Choice&#8221;
link.  If you click on it, a new slot will be added. If you want to remove the
added slot, you can click on the X to the top right of the added slot. Note
that you can&#8217;t remove the original three slots. This image shows an added slot:</p>
<img alt="Additional slot added dynamically" src="../_images/admin15t.png" />
<p>One small problem, though. It takes a lot of screen space to display all the
fields for entering related <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choice</span></tt> objects. For that reason, Django offers a
tabular way of displaying inline related objects; you just need to change
the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ChoiceInline</span></tt> declaration to read:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre>class ChoiceInline(admin.TabularInline):
    #...
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>With that <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">TabularInline</span></tt> (instead of <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">StackedInline</span></tt>), the
related objects are displayed in a more compact, table-based format:</p>
<img alt="Add question page now has more compact choices" src="../_images/admin12t.png" />
<p>Note that there is an extra &#8220;Delete?&#8221; column that allows removing rows added
using the &#8220;Add Another Choice&#8221; button and rows that have already been saved.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-customize-the-admin-change-list">
<span id="customize-the-admin-change-list"></span><h2>Customize the admin change list<a class="headerlink" href="#customize-the-admin-change-list" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Now that the Question admin page is looking good, let&#8217;s make some tweaks to the
&#8220;change list&#8221; page &#8211; the one that displays all the questions in the system.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s what it looks like at this point:</p>
<img alt="Polls change list page" src="../_images/admin04t.png" />
<p>By default, Django displays the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">str()</span></tt> of each object. But sometimes it&#8217;d be
more helpful if we could display individual fields. To do that, use the
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_display" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_display"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">list_display</span></tt></a> admin option, which is a
tuple of field names to display, as columns, on the change list page for the
object:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="c"># ...</span>
    <span class="n">list_display</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;question_text&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Just for good measure, let&#8217;s also include the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">was_published_recently</span></tt> custom
method from Tutorial 1:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/admin.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">QuestionAdmin</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">ModelAdmin</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="c"># ...</span>
    <span class="n">list_display</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;question_text&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;was_published_recently&#39;</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Now the question change list page looks like this:</p>
<img alt="Polls change list page, updated" src="../_images/admin13t.png" />
<p>You can click on the column headers to sort by those values &#8211; except in the
case of the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">was_published_recently</span></tt> header, because sorting by the output
of an arbitrary method is not supported. Also note that the column header for
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">was_published_recently</span></tt> is, by default, the name of the method (with
underscores replaced with spaces), and that each line contains the string
representation of the output.</p>
<p>You can improve that by giving that method (in <tt class="file docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/models.py</span></tt>) a few
attributes, as follows:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/models.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">Question</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">models</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Model</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="c"># ...</span>
    <span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">was_published_recently</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">):</span>
        <span class="k">return</span> <span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">pub_date</span> <span class="o">&gt;=</span> <span class="n">timezone</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">now</span><span class="p">()</span> <span class="o">-</span> <span class="n">datetime</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">timedelta</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">days</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">)</span>
    <span class="n">was_published_recently</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">admin_order_field</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">&#39;pub_date&#39;</span>
    <span class="n">was_published_recently</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">boolean</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="bp">True</span>
    <span class="n">was_published_recently</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">short_description</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">&#39;Published recently?&#39;</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>For more information on these method properties, see
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_display" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_display"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">list_display</span></tt></a>.</p>
<p>Edit your <tt class="file docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/admin.py</span></tt> file again and add an improvement to the
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Question</span></tt> change list page: filters using the
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_filter" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_filter"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">list_filter</span></tt></a>. Add the following line to
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">QuestionAdmin</span></tt>:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">list_filter</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">]</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>That adds a &#8220;Filter&#8221; sidebar that lets people filter the change list by the
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">pub_date</span></tt> field:</p>
<img alt="Polls change list page, updated" src="../_images/admin14t.png" />
<p>The type of filter displayed depends on the type of field you&#8217;re filtering on.
Because <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">pub_date</span></tt> is a <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/fields.html#django.db.models.DateTimeField" title="django.db.models.DateTimeField"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">DateTimeField</span></tt></a>, Django
knows to give appropriate filter options: &#8220;Any date,&#8221; &#8220;Today,&#8221; &#8220;Past 7 days,&#8221;
&#8220;This month,&#8221; &#8220;This year.&#8221;</p>
<p>This is shaping up well. Let&#8217;s add some search capability:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">search_fields</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">&#39;question_text&#39;</span><span class="p">]</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>That adds a search box at the top of the change list. When somebody enters
search terms, Django will search the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">question_text</span></tt> field. You can use as many
fields as you&#8217;d like &#8211; although because it uses a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">LIKE</span></tt> query behind the
scenes, limiting the number of search fields to a reasonable number will make
it easier for your database to do the search.</p>
<p>Now&#8217;s also a good time to note that change lists give you free pagination. The
default is to display 100 items per page. <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_per_page" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_per_page"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">Change</span> <span class="pre">list</span> <span class="pre">pagination</span></tt></a>, <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.search_fields" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.search_fields"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">search</span> <span class="pre">boxes</span></tt></a>, <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_filter" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_filter"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">filters</span></tt></a>, <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.date_hierarchy" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.date_hierarchy"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">date-hierarchies</span></tt></a>, and
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_display" title="django.contrib.admin.ModelAdmin.list_display"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">column-header-ordering</span></tt></a>
all work together like you think they should.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-customize-the-admin-look-and-feel">
<span id="customize-the-admin-look-and-feel"></span><h2>Customize the admin look and feel<a class="headerlink" href="#customize-the-admin-look-and-feel" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Clearly, having &#8220;Django administration&#8221; at the top of each admin page is
ridiculous. It&#8217;s just placeholder text.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s easy to change, though, using Django&#8217;s template system. The Django admin
is powered by Django itself, and its interfaces use Django&#8217;s own template
system.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-customizing-your-project-s-templates">
<span id="s-ref-customizing-your-projects-templates"></span><span id="customizing-your-project-s-templates"></span><span id="ref-customizing-your-projects-templates"></span><h3>Customizing your <em>project&#8217;s</em> templates<a class="headerlink" href="#customizing-your-project-s-templates" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Create a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">templates</span></tt> directory in your project directory (the one that
contains <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">manage.py</span></tt>). Templates can live anywhere on your filesystem that
Django can access. (Django runs as whatever user your server runs.) However,
keeping your templates within the project is a good convention to follow.</p>
<p>Open your settings file (<tt class="file docutils literal"><span class="pre">mysite/settings.py</span></tt>, remember) and add a
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a> setting:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">mysite/settings.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="n">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="n">os</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">path</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">join</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">BASE_DIR</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;templates&#39;</span><span class="p">)]</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p><a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a> is an iterable of filesystem directories to check when
loading Django templates; it&#8217;s a search path.</p>
<p>Now create a directory called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin</span></tt> inside <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">templates</span></tt>, and copy the
template <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin/base_site.html</span></tt> from within the default Django admin
template directory in the source code of Django itself
(<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">django/contrib/admin/templates</span></tt>) into that directory.</p>
<div class="admonition-where-are-the-django-source-files admonition">
<p class="first admonition-title">Where are the Django source files?</p>
<p>If you have difficulty finding where the Django source files are located
on your system, run the following command:</p>
<div class="last highlight-console"><div class="highlight"><pre>$ python -c &quot;
import sys
sys.path = sys.path[1:]
import django
print(django.__path__)&quot;
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Then, just edit the file and replace
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{{</span> <span class="pre">site_header|default:_('Django</span> <span class="pre">administration')</span> <span class="pre">}}</span></tt> (including the curly
braces) with your own site&#8217;s name as you see fit. You should end up with
a section of code like:</p>
<div class="highlight-html+django"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">block</span> <span class="nv">branding</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;h1</span> <span class="na">id=</span><span class="s">&quot;site-name&quot;</span><span class="nt">&gt;&lt;a</span> <span class="na">href=</span><span class="s">&quot;</span><span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">url</span> <span class="s1">&#39;admin:index&#39;</span> <span class="cp">%}</span><span class="s">&quot;</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span>Polls Administration<span class="nt">&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;</span>
<span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">endblock</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>We use this approach to teach you how to override templates. In an actual
project, you would probably use
the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/contrib/admin/index.html#django.contrib.admin.AdminSite.site_header" title="django.contrib.admin.AdminSite.site_header"><tt class="xref py py-attr docutils literal"><span class="pre">django.contrib.admin.AdminSite.site_header</span></tt></a> attribute to more easily
make this particular customization.</p>
<p>This template file contains lots of text like <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{%</span> <span class="pre">block</span> <span class="pre">branding</span> <span class="pre">%}</span></tt>
and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{{</span> <span class="pre">title</span> <span class="pre">}}</span></tt>. The <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{%</span></tt> and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{{</span></tt> tags are part of Django&#8217;s
template language. When Django renders <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin/base_site.html</span></tt>, this
template language will be evaluated to produce the final HTML page.
Don&#8217;t worry if you can&#8217;t make any sense of the template right now &#8211;
we&#8217;ll delve into Django&#8217;s templating language in Tutorial 3.</p>
<p>Note that any of Django&#8217;s default admin templates can be overridden. To
override a template, just do the same thing you did with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">base_site.html</span></tt> &#8211;
copy it from the default directory into your custom directory, and make
changes.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-customizing-your-application-s-templates">
<span id="customizing-your-application-s-templates"></span><h3>Customizing your <em>application&#8217;s</em> templates<a class="headerlink" href="#customizing-your-application-s-templates" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Astute readers will ask: But if <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a> was empty by default,
how was Django finding the default admin templates? The answer is that, by
default, Django automatically looks for a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">templates/</span></tt> subdirectory within
each application package, for use as a fallback (don&#8217;t forget that
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">django.contrib.admin</span></tt> is an application).</p>
<p>Our poll application is not very complex and doesn&#8217;t need custom admin
templates. But if it grew more sophisticated and required modification of
Django&#8217;s standard admin templates for some of its functionality, it would be
more sensible to modify the <em>application&#8217;s</em> templates, rather than those in the
<em>project</em>. That way, you could include the polls application in any new project
and be assured that it would find the custom templates it needed.</p>
<p>See the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/templates/api.html#template-loaders"><em>template loader documentation</em></a> for more
information about how Django finds its templates.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-customize-the-admin-index-page">
<span id="customize-the-admin-index-page"></span><h2>Customize the admin index page<a class="headerlink" href="#customize-the-admin-index-page" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>On a similar note, you might want to customize the look and feel of the Django
admin index page.</p>
<p>By default, it displays all the apps in <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-INSTALLED_APPS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">INSTALLED_APPS</span></tt></a> that have been
registered with the admin application, in alphabetical order. You may want to
make significant changes to the layout. After all, the index is probably the
most important page of the admin, and it should be easy to use.</p>
<p>The template to customize is <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin/index.html</span></tt>. (Do the same as with
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin/base_site.html</span></tt> in the previous section &#8211; copy it from the default
directory to your custom template directory.) Edit the file, and you&#8217;ll see it
uses a template variable called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">app_list</span></tt>. That variable contains every
installed Django app. Instead of using that, you can hard-code links to
object-specific admin pages in whatever way you think is best. Again,
don&#8217;t worry if you can&#8217;t understand the template language &#8211; we&#8217;ll cover that
in more detail in Tutorial 3.</p>
<p>When you&#8217;re comfortable with the admin site, read <a class="reference internal" href="tutorial03.html"><em>part 3 of this tutorial</em></a> to start working on public poll views.</p>
</div>
</div>


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  <h3><a href="../contents.html">Table Of Contents</a></h3>
  <ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Writing your first Django app, part 2</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#creating-an-admin-user">Creating an admin user</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#start-the-development-server">Start the development server</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#enter-the-admin-site">Enter the admin site</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#make-the-poll-app-modifiable-in-the-admin">Make the poll app modifiable in the admin</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#explore-the-free-admin-functionality">Explore the free admin functionality</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#customize-the-admin-form">Customize the admin form</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#adding-related-objects">Adding related objects</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#customize-the-admin-change-list">Customize the admin change list</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#customize-the-admin-look-and-feel">Customize the admin look and feel</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#customizing-your-project-s-templates">Customizing your <em>project&#8217;s</em> templates</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#customizing-your-application-s-templates">Customizing your <em>application&#8217;s</em> templates</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#customize-the-admin-index-page">Customize the admin index page</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

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